The Christmas Wassail (6 page)

‘Friends!' he shouted. ‘We are not a big company, as you can see.' We all laughed and there were some disparaging remarks from the back of the crowd, but he took no notice and continued, ‘But what we lack in numbers we make up for in quality. We are, in short, the best.' There were more cries of derision, but all good-natured and accompanied by laughter. ‘We shall give our first performance the day after tomorrow, on Saint Stephen's Day, and it will be the enactment of Saint George and his epic struggle with the dragon. No character will be omitted. As well as the saint and his terrible opponent, you will also see depicted the Turkish Knight, the Saracen, Old Man Winter, the Doctor' – there were roars of approval at this mention of the Doctor – ‘and Beelzebub Himself! Friends, you are all cordially invited to as many performances as you care to attend.' He grinned broadly, adding, ‘There will, of course, be a collection for the players at each one.'

‘I thought the city fathers were paying you!' yelled a voice, which I recognized as Jack Nym's, from somewhere to my left.

The young man answered drily, ‘This is Bristol, master.' There was a delighted roar from the crowd. He went on: ‘The mayor and aldermen are giving us free lodgings in the castle.' He cast a disparaging glance around him and nodded in the direction of the roofless guardhouse. ‘The very best, as you can see' – another roar – ‘but we have to keep body and soul together, so all donations will be gratefully received.'

He got down from the ‘stage' and resumed his place beside the girl preparatory to driving forward into the inner ward, where one of the castle stewards was waiting patiently for him by the gate. Before the two carts disappeared from sight, however, I took quick stock of his companions. Apart from the young woman, there was another man of perhaps some thirty summers sharing the box seat with them, and whose features bore a sufficient resemblance to the girl's to convince me that he was probably her brother.

The second cart was driven by a much older pair; a man and woman both well over sixty, and maybe nudging seventy if I were any judge of the matter. In spite of it being December, with a cold, nipping bite to the wind, the woman's arms were bare to the elbow and, like her face, her skin was the colour of hazelnuts. Her clothes were nondescript and shapeless, while the hands which held the horse's reins were remarkably large for her sex and appeared extremely strong. Around her head she had tied a broad strip of faded cloth from beneath which a few strands of grey hair were escaping, and between her teeth she clenched a long piece of straw which she chewed with slow, deliberate movements of her jaws. At first glance and until I noticed her skirts, I had mistaken her for a man.

Her companion on the box seat was undoubtedly male, bald but for a fringe of almost white hair which grew nearly to his shoulders. These were rounded and suggested a once tall man who was now permanently stooped with age. His skin was as brown as the woman's, indicating, as did hers, the wandering, outdoor life. But his most distinctive feature, which I noticed as he turned his head in my direction, was the puckered skin around his right eye, drawing the corner upwards as though, at some time, it had been seared with a red-hot brand. At least, I thought that this was his most distinctive feature until he put up his right hand to flick a strand of hair from his cheek and I saw that the first two fingers were missing.

The leading cart had by now disappeared through the gate into the castle's inner ward and the second was preparing to follow suit when a disturbance beyond the archway and voices raised in anger caused the woman to pull on the reins and bring the horse to a standstill. People, including Adela and myself, who had begun to disperse, came to a halt, craning over our shoulders to discover the cause of the commotion.

‘Oh, no!' groaned a voice in my ear. ‘Not him again!'

But it was indeed Sir George Marvell riding out from the inner ward, together with another man, and loudly cursing the mummers' carts which were impeding his progress.

‘Get out of my way, you idle layabouts!' he shouted. Then, turning to his companion, he demanded in ringing tones, ‘What's this riff-raff doing here, Robert?'

I knew Robert Trefusis by sight, although I knew very little about him. He was a tall, very upright, grey-haired man of roughly Sir George's own age, and I understood him to be, again like Sir George, a man of inherited wealth. He was, I believed, an alderman who, on occasions, acted as one of the sheriff's deputies, a role I suspected he had been playing that afternoon. It was my guess that Sir George had been to the castle to pay his son's and grandson's fines for breaking the King's Peace that morning.

Alderman Trefusis shrugged. ‘It's the Christmas mummers. None of my doing, George,' he replied with equal clarity. He glanced contemptuously at the second cart and the old pair seated on the box. ‘We were too late to hire a decent troupe and this rubbish was all we could find.' He laughed loudly. ‘As you can see for yourself – the old, the halt and the blind. Well, semi-blind, at least. Not worth their board and food for my money.'

There was an uncomfortable murmuring amongst the crowd but, to their credit, the old couple showed no reaction of any sort. They merely stared at the two men as if they weren't there, as if they were looking right through them. Then the woman removed the straw from her mouth in order to spit over the side of the cart and the man picked his teeth with a grubby fingernail before the horse, responding to a flick of the reins, moved forward and entered the inner ward.

The gate closed behind them and the crowd once more began to move.

‘What've we done to deserve that he should come and live amongst us, eh?' demanded the same voice as before, and I turned to find Jack Nym beside me. He continued without waiting for an answer, ‘That Sir George got a lovely gert house up in Clifton what he's abandoned. All empty it is now. Weeds growing everywhere. Wood beginning to rot. Why he don't make it over to his son and daughter-in-law and their boy is more'n anyone can tell. But he's one o'them controlling sort. He holds the purse strings and doles out the money.'

I grinned. ‘You've been talking to Burl Hodge.'

Jack frowned. ‘No, I ain't. What d'you mean?'

‘Burl doesn't like Sir George, either.'

‘Does anyone?' was the explosive answer. ‘Do you?'

‘Not much,' I admitted. ‘Although I believe he's a brave man. Fought in the French wars with great credit.'

‘Huh!' Jack dismissed this with a wave of his hand. ‘I'll tell you one who hates his very guts, and that's his sister.'

‘Why?' asked Adela as we struggled across the bridge, hemmed in on all sides.

Jack shook his head. ‘Too long a story an' I've got a load of sea coal to deliver before today's out. You ask Mistress Walker or one of her cronies. They'll know.' He began ruthlessly elbowing his way through the people ahead of us. ‘God grant you a merry Christmas,' he called back over his shoulder.

The next moment he was lost to view.

W
e did not see Margaret Walker until the following day, when she came to take her Christmas dinner with us.

We were all tired after the excitement of the mummers' arrival, and Adela decreed we must go to bed as soon as supper was finished, especially the children, if we were to be up at midnight for the first of the day's three Masses. This, the Angel's Mass, we always celebrated at St Giles's Church, in Bell Lane, as it was the shortest distance from our house and entailed the minimum of walking at an hour when none of us was at our best. Strangely, the children always seemed fresher than either Adela or myself, and enjoyed the novelty of being abroad at an hour when they were normally tucked up securely in their beds. This year, the newest addition to our family, eleven-month-old Luke, he of the curly hair and ready smile, protested a little at being roused from his first deep sleep, but, as I have already indicated, he was of too sunny a disposition to be disturbed by anything for long, and the sight of all the other people and the flickering candlelight in the church soon restored him to his normal good humour.

St Giles, as I have explained elsewhere in these chronicles, is built on the foundations of the Jewish Synagogue which stood upon the site for a hundred years and more until the first Edward expelled the Jews two centuries ago, and for me, that knowledge has always added something extra to the sanctity of the place – although that was not a sentiment I dared communicate even to Adela, Or, perhaps, especially not to Adela. We managed to push our way to the front of the crowd thronging the nave, so that even Adam could see everything without being picked up, while my wife and I shared the burden of our foster son between us. The figures of the saint – the mentor, so it is claimed, of Charlemagne – and the deer he rescued from King Flavius's huntsmen had both been newly painted and glowed in the light from the altar candles and wall cressets. Luke was enchanted, clapping his little hands and dribbling with enthusiasm as he tried to express his joy. Walking the short distance back to our house, he bounced up and down in my arms with sheer exuberance.

Adela groaned. ‘He's never going to settle, and we must be up again at dawn for the Shepherds' Mass.' She added, ‘I thought we'd walk up to All Saints.'

The three older children jibbed a bit at that but, like myself, they knew better than to take issue with the decision. There were times, and this was one of them, when once Adela had made up her mind on some matter, it was useless to argue with her. She could be as stubborn as a mule and invariably carried her point. Consequently, after a few hours sleep, we were all to be found trudging wearily up Small Street and crossing Corn Street to All Saints' Church.

Yet again, the building was full and we were not so lucky this time in our attempts to reach the front of the nave. This, after all, was not our church and the regular worshippers quite rightly resented our efforts to take precedence over them. As a result, we were some way back, not far from the door, so that my attention was distracted by the arrival of every latecomer (and also of every early departure, if it came to that). To my astonishment, among the former was Lady Marvell, who hurried in about ten minutes after the Mass had started, alone except for a young girl who I guessed to be her maid.

The Marvell family naturally attended the great church of St Mary in Redcliffe – or St Mary Redcliffe as it was commonly referred to, as though the saint had a second name – and I was amazed to see Patience appear on this side of the river, at All Saints. That she was by herself was obvious when, after ten minutes or so had gone by, no other member of the family had joined her. Watching her closely, I thought she seemed anxious not to draw attention to herself, lingering at the back of the congregation and keeping her eyes cast down in an attempt to avoid people's gaze. She was wearing the same fur-trimmed brown velvet cloak as the day before, and kept the hood drawn close about her face. Her whole demeanour seemed to me to be slightly furtive, and I was not entirely surprised to see her slip unobtrusively out of the church before the Mass was finished. The maid had plainly been told to stay where she was and made no move to follow.

Fortunately, Adela had only recently relieved me of Luke, so I was able go in pursuit without my absence being noticed, for a while at least. I was just in time to catch a glimpse of Patience Marvell's cloak as she turned into Corn Street and caught her up with very little trouble, keeping a dozen or so paces behind her. She appeared to be heading for the Frome quayside, but then suddenly stopped short a few yards before reaching the entrance to Marsh Street. Here, she cast a quick, furtive glance around, withdrawing into the shadow of an adjacent doorway, huddling even further inside the protection of her cloak and looking extremely ill-at-ease. Almost immediately, a man joined her; a man who must have been loitering in the vicinity awaiting her arrival.

I sucked in my breath. Marsh Street! Otherwise known as ‘Little Ireland'! And even though the light was still poor, the winter sun not yet having climbed above the rooftops, I recognized Patience Marvell's companion and knew whose face it was that I had seen two nights before in the Green Lattis. It belonged to someone with whom I had had dealings once or twice in the past. His name was Briant of Dungarvon and he was an Irish slave trader.

For a moment I felt thoroughly bewildered, then suddenly everything began to fall into place and make sense. There could only be one reason why Lady Marvell was making secret assignations with an Irish slave trader and that was because she wished to have someone illegally transported to Ireland and sold into slavery. My first thought was of Cyprian Marvell, but I quickly rejected him. He was too old to be of any use as a servant and, I guessed, too astute and too resourceful to allow himself to be caught. But his son, James, the next heir to the Marvell fortune after his father, was, from what I had seen of him the previous morning, the sort of arrogant, self-confident young bravo who might easily be flattered into doing something stupid and lured into a trap. And with James removed, Bartholomew, Patience's son, would be assured of his inheritance when Cyprian died, for I doubted if Joanna Marvell, from my glimpse of her, was young enough to bear more children.

I stood irresolute, not quite believing what I was seeing and unsure what to do. If I brought myself to the conspirators' attention – and if they had turned their heads and glanced up the street they could have seen me plainly – then that must surely nip in the bud any transaction they were about to make. On the other hand, Briant of Dungarvon knew me, and although in the past our relationship had been one of mutual, if guarded, respect, he was unlikely to thank me for spoiling a lucrative deal. An attempt at retribution would undoubtedly follow. I decided, therefore, that my best course of action was to make myself scarce before I was spotted and tell my tale as soon as possible to Richard Manifold. And if he were unwilling to accept my interpretation of what I had witnessed, I should have to go to Cyprian Marvell himself. I suspected I should have no difficulty in convincing him.